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• These study notes cover terms and definitions related to maladaptive behavior patterns, mental illnesses, and related concepts.

Definition of Terms

• Aberration: A deviation from what is considered normal.
• Affect: A subjective feeling or emotional state, which can be consistent or persistent.
• Alienist: A legal term for a psychiatrist qualified to testify on the subject of insanity.
• Ambivalence: The coexistence of two opposing feelings or tones, like love and hate.
• Amnesia: Memory loss, either partial (forgetting recent events) or complete (loss of all past memories).
• Apathy: Lack of interest or emotion in situations that usually evoke a response.
• Apperception: Using senses to recognize and interpret objects in the environment.
• Asthenic Physique: A slender body build with a flat, long chest and poor muscle development.
• Athletic Physique: A broad-shouldered, deep-chested body with a flat abdomen, thick neck, and well-developed muscles.
• Autism: Subjective thinking with excessive introspection, leading to fantasy, delusions, and hallucinations.
• Chorea: A disease causing irregular, involuntary movements of the limbs or body.
• Clonic Spasm: Jerking movements in parts of the body, following the stiffening phase of a convulsion.
• Conflict: A situation involving two opposing drives or actions, requiring a choice.
• Conversion: Experiencing an emotional state as a physical symptom, relieving anxiety or unpleasant feelings.
• Cyclothymia: Mildly fluctuating mood shifts resembling manic-depressive states.
• Delusion: A false belief that cannot be altered by reason or evidence.
• Depersonalization: Loss of the feeling of personal identity, feeling like an empty shell or ghost.
• Deterioration: Progressive impairment of intellect, memory, and emotions.
• Dipsomania: An overwhelming, periodic craving for alcohol.
• Disorientation: Inability to identify date, time, place, or surroundings.
• Ego: The conscious self that deals with reality.
• Egocentric: Being self-centered.
• Emotion: A combination of feeling and its physiological expression (e.g., goosebumps, nausea).
• Empathy: Understanding others' feelings without experiencing the same emotional reaction.
• Environment: External conditions and influences affecting life, development, and behavior.
• Exhibitionism: Displaying one's body to attract sexual interest.
• Event: Disorientation to event described as not knowing the current time, place, date as well as what occurrences are taking place.
• Extrovert: Directing interest and energy outward, opposite of introvert.
• Fetishism: Adoring an object that substitutes for a love object.
• Functional Mental Disorder/Illness: psychiatric disorder lacking observable organic changes.
• Furor: Frenzied feeling state.
• Hallucination: False sensory perception.
• Hedonist: Seeking pleasure as the primary goal.
• Heterosexual: Sexual attraction to the opposite sex.
• Homosexual: Sexual attraction to the same sex.
• Hyperactive: Excessively physical and mentally active.
• ID: The unconscious part of personality containing primitive drives and desires.
• Identification: Mental mechanism of unconsciously patterning oneself after another person.
• Illusion: Misinterpretation of something in the environment.
• Incest: Sexual relations between closely related individuals.
• Insomnia: Inability to fall asleep.
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ): The relationship between mental and chronological age.
• Introvert: Turning thoughts and energies inward.
• Involutional: Referring to the period of menopause.
• Kleptomania: Uncontrollable impulse to steal.
• Lucid Interval: A temporary remission of mental illness symptoms, where reasoning and judgment appear normal.
• Libido: Psychoanalytic term for psychic drive or energy, often tied to sexual instinct.
• Malingerer: Deliberately faking illness or disability.
• Masochism: Deriving sexual pleasure from being hurt or subdued physically.
• Mental Mechanism: Psychological methods to resolve conflicts and meet personality needs.
• Multiple Personality: Also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, adopting two or more separate personalities with amnesia between them.
• Negativism: Doing the opposite of what's expected.
• Neurologist: Doctor specializing in the nervous system.
• Nymphomania: Strong desire for heterosexual relationships in women.
• Obsession: Constant and inescapable preoccupation with an idea or emotion.
• Organic Mental Disorder: Psychiatric disorder due to physical changes in body tissues.
• Oriented: Awareness of time, place, and person.
• Palsy: Weakness or paralysis of muscles.
• Pedophilia: Sexual attraction towards children.
• Perversion: Deriving sexual satisfaction from socially unacceptable objects or methods.
• Phobia: Abnormal fear of a non-dangerous object or situation.
• Preoccupied: Deeply engaged in thought, lacking interest in immediate surroundings.
• Psyche: The mind.
• Psychiatry: Medicine dealing with the causes and treatment of mental illness.
• Psychoanalysis: Relating unresolved conflicts and abnormal behavior to unconscious repression.
• Psychodynamics: Mental forces influencing development and behavior.
• Psychobiologic: Relating patient's conscious drives and environment.
• Psychosis: Mental illness with loss of contact with reality and bizarre behavior.
• Pyknic Type: A rotund body physique with thick shoulders, short neck, broad head, and tendency to accumulate fat.
• Pyromania: Uncontrollable impulse to set fires.
• Reaction Formation: Developing an extreme character trait to hide its opposite.
• Regression: Returning to an earlier level of behavior.
• Rejection: Refusal to accept; in psychiatry, feeling unaccepted.
• Remission: Temporary recovery from illness symptoms.
• Retardation: Slowing down in actions or thoughts (e.g., eating, walking).
• Sadism: Deriving sexual satisfaction from inflicting pain on others.
• Schizoid: Resembling schizophrenia.
• Seclusive: Drawing away from others, remaining alone.
• Siblings: Brothers and sisters.
• Soma: The body.
• Somatic: Referring to the body.
• Somnambulism: Sleepwalking.
• Stereotypy: Aimless repetition of verbal, intellectual, emotional, or motor abilities.
• Subconscious: Part of the mind that can be recalled to awareness.
• Superego: The critical, censoring portion of personality (the conscience).
• Tonic Spasms: Sustained muscle contraction, observed in the stiffening phase of a convulsion.
• Toxic Psychosis: Mental illness caused by infection, drugs, alcohol, or other poisons.
• Transient: Fleeting or temporary.
• Tranversion/Transvestism: Wearing clothes of the opposite sex.
• Unconsciousness: Reservoir of memories and emotions not immediately accessible.
• Wavy Flexibility: A body posture maintained for a long period.
• Pathological Limb Rigidity: Rigidity of the extremities due to anxiety or emotional problems.
• Compulsions: Repetitive actions against conscious wishes (e.g., hand washing, checking).
• Echopraxia: Duplicating movements and gestures of others.
• Echolalia: Repeating the speech of another.
• Tics and Spasms: Involuntary twitching and jerking of parts of the body.
• Punning: Injecting witty remarks into conversations or using words with the same sound but different meanings.
• Rhyming: Reciting in a lyrical, poetic manner.
• Clang Association: Linking words by similar sounds.
• Neologism: Coining new words with symbolic meaning.
• Blocking: Suddenly stopping speech.
• Irrelevance: Verbal responses unrelated to the topic.
• Circumstantiality: Using many unnecessary details.
• Flight of Ideas: Rapid, continuous conversation with abrupt topic changes.
• Word Salad: Disconnected communication with a mixture of meaningless words and sentences.
• Mutism: Being silent or voiceless.
• Euphoria: An exaggerated feeling of well-being, disproportionate to stimuli.
• Elation: An affective reaction beyond euphoria, with increased anxiety and activity.
• Apathy: Reduced emotional response.
• Blunting: Flattening of affect; loss of emotional expression.
• Ambivalence: Coexisting of two opposing drives, desires, or emotions.
• Lability: Emotional instability with rapidly changing thoughts and feeling tones.
• Irritability: Feeling emotionally out of harmony.
• Insight: Recognizing and accepting the fact that one is ill.
• Disorientation: Being unaware of the correct date, time, place, person, and events.
• Distractibility: Inability to focus attention, easily affected by environmental stimuli.
• Impairment of judgement: Inability to logically assess situations.